NEW LAUNCH: CHEVROLETWith its summer 2012 launch, Chevrolet is hoping to bed in before the 'January rush' – but, asks NEIL BRISCOE, will this new Opel-by-another-name sound the death knell for its older GM sibling?
YOU WOULD THINK that the summer of 2012, when the Irish car market is on its knees and the average Irish consumer is reluctant enough to spend what little spare cash they have left, would simply not be the right time to launch a new car brand. Chevrolet is not exactly new, coming to Ireland in 2004 as a re-constituted Daewoo, following General Motors’ buyout of one of Korea’s few industrial failures.
When the changeover first happened, those of us expecting automotive Americana were disappointed. While Chevrolet was off developing and launching new models globally, the brand stagnated in Ireland.
All of which means that, arriving this summer with the Spark city car, the Aveo supermini, the Cruze hatchback and saloon, the Orlando MPV and the updated Captiva SUV, Chevrolet is effectively an all-new brand with an all-new model line up. And you’d have to wonder about the sense of trying to get apathetic Irish car buyers interested in such things at a time when even established players such as Citroën, Mazda and Fiat are having a tough enough time getting people interested in their products.
Yet Chevrolet’s country director Thomas McQueirns reckons that the timing is actually ideal, giving the brand time to bed in, ahead of the January sales.
“I suppose what we were doing was taking over from the previous independent importer and we’re taking the time to establish our dealer network and start bringing in the new Chevrolet models. Some of these models would be very new to the Irish market, and so we’re building towards 2013, building our network, getting dealers on board and ramping up the training and all of that. So it’s a good time actually to start setting up, to get ready for January.”
All well and good, but it does assume that there will be a sales rush in January, which – with the flat-lining economy, looming vehicle registration tax and motor tax changes and the spectre (real or otherwise) of the feared 2013 plate – is far from guaranteed.
Chevrolet needs to convince buyers to walk past established budget-minded brands such as Hyundai, Kia and Skoda and invest in an all-American hero. How exactly is that going to happen?
“I think one of the things that we have in Ireland is that there’s an understanding of what Chevrolet is,” says McQuierns.
“It’s been in the Irish psyche for many years; people know the brand. The fact that the cars are coming in with very good pricing, very good specification and a five-year warranty will help that.
“I think also Irish customers do like to see what’s new, and as with all customers they want something with good value and good specifications, and over the last few years the Irish market has become educated to having cars with a good, strong warranty.”
It’s a fair point. Chevrolet’s latest products are nothing if not competent, and a world away from the Korean products that the brand introduced in 2004. But there’s little that separates Chevrolet from its Korean and Czech rivals, and the arrival of Dacia, Renault’s Romanian-based budget brand, will really put the cat among the price-slashing pigeons.
Chevrolet’s other problem is that, in a grand General Motors tradition stretching back to the 1920s, its models are effectively badge-engineered Opels (and vice versa, of course). There is nothing in the Chevrolet range that is not closely mirrored in the Opel range, leading to an inevitable, and painful, sense that we’ve seen it all before. While there is certainly a price and standard equipment differential between the two brands, it may not be enough to unstick hard-to-change Irish minds.
In fact, though, that problem of duplication could become Opel’s downfall and Chevrolet’s rise. Opel is bleeding money and is currently in the midst of a painful re-organisation that this past week has seen the surprise departure of its chief executive, Karl-Friedrich Stracke. Opel’s original plan – to push its range upmarket in both image and price – is in tatters, recently repudiated by Stracke, who said that Opel needed to cut its prices to attract younger buyers. With no upmarket premium move, that leaves Opel open to in-house competition from Chevrolet, and that’s a tough battle to win, given Opel’s high-cost German production base, compared with Chevrolet’s Korean operation.
The current sales figures reflect this divide. In a flat, frequently falling European market, Chevrolet reported that its first-quarter 2012 sales figures gave it a 7.8 per cent increase in market share.
Opel, meanwhile, has spent the past three years racking up an unsustainable $3.5 billion loss. The Detroit accountants will not miss the significance of those figures.
Opel is stressing that its turnaround plan is the work of more than just Stracke, and that his departure changes nothing, but to many it seems like just the latest in a litany of GM mismanagements of Opel.
With the restructuring still to be negotiated with Germany’s all-powerful unions, the prospect of GM not selling off Opel, but shutting it down and replacing it altogether with Chevrolet, has never been more likely.
